Sock Gnomes

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Apparently the way to beat a sock gnome is with patience. Much like a two-year old who won’t got to sleep, it turns out the little buggers will give in if you wait them out long enough.

What is a sock gnome? An SG is an invisible, tiny creature that steals socks. Not pairs of sock, but one sock at a time.

After folding copious amounts of laundry, I’m usually left with one or two socks without mates. I leave them in the bottom of the laundry basket as their buddy, who was probably stuck under the hamper, didn’t make into the hamper, was captive in Baylie’s bag or has been stuck in the arm of a shirt, will usually show up in the next load.

It dawned on me a few weeks ago that the number of single socks in the basket were multiplying. To the tune of 8 socks with no mates. I decided I would wait a week and if their twin didn’t show up, they were gonners. When the time came to make good on my proclamation, I couldn’t do it. So there the lonely socks sat…until this week.

As I was pulling yet another load of whites out of the dryer, I noted a sock that I was certain came from the sad sock collection. And then another one fell out – same thing. Sure that I had accidentally washed the mate-less bunch, I dug to the bottom of the basket. Much to my surprise, I found all the singles were still there. THEIR MATES HAD MAGICALLY RETURNED! As I matched the friends up, I noted that the prodigal socks were a little worse for the wear. They were all a little faded and a little stretched. Perhaps the sock gnomes only have one foot and therefore only need one sock? And the like to sit in the sun wearing their sock?

So the moral of the story is this; sock gnomes are annoying, albeit impatient little creeps. Wait them out and your feet will once again be covered in matching footwear.

Reduce, Recycle and Reuse

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A few years ago, Peter’s mom and dad gave us two beautiful chimineas straight from Mexico. And literally with in a week, we had broken one of them.

For those not in the know – a chiminea is a little ceramic fireplace for the outdoors.

Well, WE didn’t break it, the umbrella did. If I hadn’t seen what happened with my own eyes, we probably would have never been able to piece the crime scene together. I was on a conference call for work and pacing the house. It was one of those extremely boring calls but one that required me to actually pay attention so pacing kept me from the temptation of Facebook and People.com. As I passed through the living room, I stopped to admire how nice our backyard looked. The plants were green, we had new patio furniture and of course, the chimineas. As I was watching, a small breeze kicked up – and suddenly the umbrella in the new patio table was lifted from its resting place, flipped end over end into the chiminea and landing in the small tree in the corner of the yard. Bam! Just like that, my beautiful utopia was smashed. literally. The chiminea was broken and spilling sand all over the patio, the umbrella broke and arm and more than one delicate branch on the tree was snapped.

Stunned, sad and a little too emotional to trash the broken chiminea, I convinced Peter to help me move it to a spot in the yard where I could turn it into a planter. PW was skeptical and not very supportive, but he can’t say no to my sad face/ nagging so the chiminea found a new home and became a new home for plants.

It dawned on me when I was watering it this week just how pretty the Petunias looked spilling out the front opening and the broken back – and then a little breeze kicked up….Bay and I made sure the umbrellas were all down and then took cover, just in case.

What’s in Baylie’s Bag? – 3rd Eddition

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This week Bay’s bag of choice  was my big beach tote. She could easily fit inside it if she wanted and it takes her two little baby man hands plus a lot of strength to carry it around, but she loves it.

Contents:

A hat

Her sandals

A bottle of lotion

Butt Paste diaper rash cream

A ziploc bag

Her Mini Mouse purse – she needs a bag to carry all her bags!

Play food ice cream and cookies

Rasins

A bowl of Goldfish crackers

Her Barbie cup

The box from a new bottle of Benadryl

Her “goggles” – she think because her sun glasses have a strap that they are goggles

Her business card that daddy made. It reads:

Baylor E. Wand

BaP (Big Girl at Play)

Available for Bar Mitzvahs, Weddings, Parties and Funerals

 

 

The Sleep Terrorist

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This morning at 1am, during my second visit to Baylie’s room and after Peter’s second visit to her room, I found myself thinking the same phrase over and over; Baylie is a sleep terrorist.

When Bay was a newborn and several months after, I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep. Not that knowing I wasn’t going to sleep at night was any prize, but the alternative was the anticipation of a restful sleep and then having it repeatedly disrupted. While I have the honed skill of not having to be fully awake in order to comfort B and get her back to sleep, lately the process has been a bit more involved, Rocking her, barganing with her and then putting up with a few minutes of screaming (both Baylie and myself)  in order to get her to go back to sleep is forcing me to be in a hightented state of awareness. Thus making me very cranky.

As I was trying to guess the reason she couldn’t get back to sleep this morning, I couldn’t help but think that these little acts of wakefulness are indeed acts of terrorism. They are meant to make me feel a little uneasy each night, never really knowing if it’s going to be a dream-filled peaceful night or one where I pull myself out of my cozy bed, stomp across the living room and focus very hard on not falling alseep in the glider and thus dropping the kiddo. Only to put her in her crib and have her spring back up screaming.

And so the Sleep Terrorist wins another battle…

Happy Anniversary!

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Yes, that’s right. It was 1 year ago today that The Goon Room was born. I was looking through the stats from the past year and thought I would revisit some of the highest hit posts from the past year and also my personal favorites.

The highest hits in one day was “It’s A Facebook Miracle!”. Not only funny, but something that everyone who has a slight obsession with Facebook can relate to.

My favorite kiddo posts are a mix of me whining about something Bay is or isn’t doing and those that are mushy because she’s so stinking cute – Kiddo Milestones and Daddy Did My Hair are two of the best.

The Rant category always gets  lot of comments and excitement mostly because I’m a snarky, awesome complainer. The best examples are the “ungrateful for” series, specifically 7  Things I’m Ungrateful For. Also I particularly hate tourists and annoying people.

I always get nice comments on my recipes, like the delicious meatballs featured in My Meatballs are Better Than Your Meatballs and the yummy sauce that complements the meatballs so well. However, there were some losers such as Whopper Brownies.

And a few random posts like What the Mary Poppins?! and Phones On A Plane are two of my favorites, well, just because they were fun to write.

So peruse the material from the past year and enjoy – there’s more where this came from. Thank you so much for reading!

Invasion of the Stuffed Animals

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I knew this was coming. I just didn’t know it was going to be so soon and soooo dramatic.

Since giving up her pacifiers, Baylie has become increasingly obsessed with her stuffed animals. Particularly any recent acquisitions. The obsession has gotten so severe, she can’t sleep without them and needs them for at least 20 minutes after waking up. I’m sure here dentist and orthodontist will agree that these fluffy friends are much better for her teeth than a pacifier, but I think the pacifier may be better for Mommy’s sanity.

Our new bed time ritual involves getting Kat, Beanie Butt Bear, Little Bear AND blankie out of the crib. Bay attempts to carry all four of these items plus a cup of milk to the couch to snuggle before being shuttled off to bed. After prayers, we put the pillow down, then her, then blankie over top and then hand each animal to her individually while she decides their placement next to her. Last, the “aquarium” at the opposite side of the crib is turned on.

On top of all of this, Bay’s not been sleeping well – she was up we think 6 times last night. I say “think” because I’ve trained myself to go into her room, offer whatever comfort she needs and then get back to bed without having to fully wake up – it’s a skill – so I can’t be totally sure how many times I went in and repeated the same ritual. A normal suggestion would be to remove several of the thousand security items in order to allow her to sleep without rolling over on on them repeatedly, but I’m thinking that’s not an option. I’m praying that the sleeplessness is seasonal or molars coming in or allergies or something that isn’t going to last until she’s 12 because the men with the big butterfly nets will have come to get me long before she reaches puberty.

When Baylie wakes up, the reverse of the ritual is preformed. I intervened after watching her get increasingly upset when Daddy was not “doing it right”. First, Bay picks up Kat. Then she hands me her blanket – which I am to put over my shoulder. Then both bears. Then I pick her and Kat up, hand her both the bears and then attempt to carry her out of her room while she clutches all her animals while laying her head on her blanket on my shoulder. To say this process is annoying is an understatement.

But at least this way she’ll have pretty teeth, right??

What’s in Baylie’s Bag? – 2 Edition

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This is the second edition of “What’s in Baylie’s Bag?”. In case you missed the first, I am documenting  the crazy things that Ms.B likes to carry around with her in an edition posted each week.

This week, Bay chose the baby buggy that once belonged to her Aunt Ali and myself as her method of transportation of her treasure. The contents? Why Barbies, of course.

Contents:

Peter Rabbit themed Barbie

Bath Tub Barbie

Barbie brush

A bowl that once contained Goldfish crackers that were most likely stealthily eaten by Bear T. Dog – now containing a play food ice cream cone

A wiffle ball

The instructions to her Peg Play game which she opens and pretends to read by saying “read read read”. Also a few pegs and the strings from the game

The bathing suit and towel costume from her new and very much loved Build-A-Bear brand “Kat”. We can’t be normal and just build a bear, we build cats

UofA Wildcat puppet – BEARDOWN!!!

Search Me

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In anticipation of the one year anniversary of The Goon Room, I was looking over some of the blog’s stats. Top posts, highest number of visitors, etc. One stat that I find hilarious is tags searched. So what people are using to search for The Goon Room. And they are:

goon room, the goon room blog, the goon room, terrorist drink

Now, the first three make sense. But if you haven’t been a reader of The Goon Room for long, they you’re probably unfamiliar with the last one. Be sure and catch up on “If We Don’t Drink, the Terrorist Win“.

Baylie and the Ashes

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For those non Catholics (or Catholics who forgot) today is Ash Wednesday – which is why many are walking around with what looks to be schmutz from pressing their forehead against a dirty window. It is the commencement of Lent, the time where we prepare for Easter. Or otherwise known as the time where people come up with something silly in their lives to give up and promptly bail on it four days later.

Baylie and I attended Mass this morning with Pop and Noni (Jim and Jude – my parentals) and also Uncle Mike (“Aaah My” as B says) joined us. We were a minute late and ended up sitting in front of Pop and Noni – which means Bay spent the entire hour walking or trying to climb back to them.

After getting our ashes, B was horrified. I have passed my germ-a-phobe ways on to her so she was disgusted by the fact everyone had dirt on their heads. She made a face that she usually only uses when she is telling me she needs a diaper change – a furrowed brow, a wrinkled nose and her little gapped front teeth showing. She then proceeded to point to each of our heads and say “eeewwwww”. When I pointed out that she too had the dirt, she began to rub her own head and mine to get clean. Thankfully she’s adorable so most of the parishioners around us didn’t mind her judgment.

Needless to say, the ashes didn’t make it to pancakes after church.

Rules Based on Fiction

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One of the many benefits of living in Scottsdale Arizona is spring training. That magical time of year when the boys of summer practice America’s Favorite Past Time less than a mile from our house. There are few things that I think are close to what heaven is like – but sitting in the sun, watching a game and drinking a beer is one of them.

I’ve noticed the following occurance before, but never asked why until this season. At most spring training stadiums when a beer, soda or water is purchased, the consessions employee removes the top and then hands the customer the bottle. If asked for the cap, the employee will refuse to give it to the customer.

This may not seem like a big deal, but if I buy a beer and a bottle of water, I really want the water for later and without the cap I risk knocking over the bottle and spilling the water. Which is a very likely scenario. So this makes the whole no cap business pretty annoying. And if it possibly involves possibly spilling my beer, down right scarry.

I asked a concession worker who looked to be about twelve years old why I couldn’t have the cap. He launched into a tirade about how they can’t give the caps because people fill the empty or nearly empty bottles with dirt, seal them with a cap and then launch the dirt bottles at the players. And before I could say “couldn’t they do that anyway without the cap?!” he anticipated my question by saying “and no, it wouldn’t work without the cap so that’s why we don’t give the caps”.

Peter and I promptly decided this was crap and proceeded to the next beer stand – for research of course – and got the same response. As we sipped our beers we were flooded with questions; where do you get the dirt to put in the bottle? If you made a mud mixture, you wouldn’t really need a cap, right? Even if the bottle didn’t have a cap, wouldn’t it still hurt to get hit with a partially filled bottle? Couldn’t you use something other than a cap? Like gum to seal the bottle? And on and on. We were obsessed. Who and where had this horrible atrocity occured thus ruining the containment of liquids for everyone? And was the damage so bad that the entire major leauge got together to make this a rule? Should they ban bottles of every kind? What about peanut bags filled with dirt? Or peanuts? What about hotdogs filled with dirt? The last few may have been the beer talking.

As we walked into the Cubs v Dodgers game on Sunday, we were solicited by a man selling frozen water bottles outside the stadium. His sign said that if you leave the bottle caps sealed, you can take them into the stadium and they were a third of the price than those sold in the stadium. So we bought and sure enough, the ticket takers were more interested in my bag than anything else. So we had done it. We had gotten bottles WITH CAPS into the stadium.

Now, to find some dirt.